Countdown
by InkWorthy
Summary: They both thought they knew what the numbers on their wrist meant. They were wrong. (Pinsty mini-series, because I can't be stopped. AU.)
1. Chapter 1

_This is another for-funsies piece, because I had an idea and had to run with it. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

"See those pretty numbers, Kirsty?" Frank was smiling, but it didn't look like a fun smile. "Those tell you how long you're going to live. Isn't that something?" Kirsty rubbed her arm, trying not to look Frank in the eye. The numbers were so small, barely an inch wide along her wrist, and she didn't like that he'd seen them. Your mark was supposed to be secret, something you only shared with the people you trusted the most. Not even her dad had seen it, and Frank had only noticed because she'd forgotten her watch.

"It's something," she answered, pulling on her watch. It was a cheap thing, but it did its job. "I have plenty of time left, then." Thousands upon thousands of hours, the seconds ticking away before her eyes. Sometimes she watched them, mesmerized, in the middle of the night.

"You're lucky, Kirsty." She didn't like Frank, didn't like the little chuckle he made as he sucked in on his cigarette that he wasn't supposed to have. Kirsty hated his visits. She pulled her backpack on.

"I need to go to school, Uncle," she said, and left the kitchen without waiting for him to say anything else.

* * *

She'd never really done the math; Kirsty didn't want to know how far away she was until she got there. It was the last day of high school and she was watching the seconds fall away under her watch, not listening to the teacher because the teacher had never really listened to her.

Some students had shown off their marks. Not everyone had numbers; some had shapes, distinct or not, or they had phrases or words or a scramble of letters. One person had a name; one girl had asked Kirsty, because Kirsty didn't tell secrets, if it was normal for two names to appear. Kirsty had admitted she didn't know, but she didn't know if any of the marks were normal anyway, and that seemed to reassure that girl enough. Kirsty hoped she'd turn out okay, she was nice. She certainly wasn't going to mention one of the names had been a girl's, too.

Steve asked about her mark, but he backed off when she told him no, she wanted to keep that to herself. He'd seemed disappointed, but how was she supposed to explain that she had a clock counting the hours of her life, and counting down, not up?

Kirsty was going to die young. She'd never done the math, but she had watched the clock long enough to know that it was almost up.

* * *

Kirsty's father had a mark shaped like a strange blob, almost a flower, and sometimes it changed shape.

"It gets a new petal every time I fall in love," he'd said when he showed it to her - there were a few, some small and faded, some new. Three were the darkest against his skin - "your mother, she's that one, and that's Julia."

"What about the third one?" She asked, fidgeting with her watch just a little.

"That one's you, Kirsty, the moment I first held you in my arms." He kissed her forehead, and she smiled a little.

* * *

Kirsty's watch was confiscated when she was admitted to the hospital, so she'd tied a bandage around it. _That bastard knew,_ she thought of Frank, _he knew it was going to be him._ She had barely glimpsed the number of hours when they took the watch, and hadn't looked at it again, but it made her stomach flip.

It was less than 48. She shook, not wanting to see the number, not wanting to think about it. She'd known - she'd almost always known - that she was going to die young; but now she could feel Death's sweet kiss on her cheek, waiting for her, and she cried.

She wasn't _ready._

* * *

The box opened and they appeared. Kirsty had pleaded, narrowly escaping with her skin intact, and she found herself on her hands and knees in the cold and empty hospital room. She struggled to breathe, struggled to stop crying, when she looked at her wrist almost out of habit.

00:00:00. Six unblinking eyes staring back at her. She was alive, and she suddenly felt extremely guilty; had she cheated, somehow? Was she supposed to die, or be taken away? Her eyes watered as she stared at the number, trying to think about what had happened, trying to understand. She squeezed her eyes shut, took in a breath, and opened them.

No change.

* * *

The number didn't budge. Not when she confronted Frank; not when the Cenobites confronted her; not when the house burned down and Steve abandoned her at the hospital. _Maybe I was supposed to die,_ she thought as she sat in her hospital room. Maybe she should have gone with them; maybe she'd made a mistake.

 _Was I supposed to die?_

* * *

She forgot the number, but she couldn't really _forget._ Even as she searched the labyrinth, even as she searched for Tiffany, she couldn't wash it from her mind.

Channard was at her heels. It felt like her whole world was coming down, an avalanche an inch behind her, and she had run out of time days before. She pushed on only because she didn't know what else she could do, because she hadn't planned past the minutes running out.

Those six zeroes waited patiently - waited for what?

* * *

 _This is it,_ Kirsty thought as the doctor approached, _this is really the end._ She urged Tiffany to run, to safety, and run she did; Kirsty was left behind, and she accepted that. Her father was not here, she had no answers, only the baffled look of the Cenobite prince whose world she'd just torn down. She saw those black eyes on her, and closed her own; there was nowhere to run, no loving arms to protect her now.

She heard a cry and opened her eyes; chains in the doctor's skin and the felled Cenobites, but the one remaining - the leader - stood.

* * *

Kirsty knelt before the man on the ground, the blood on her face dripping onto his pale cheek. Salt stung her eyes as she touched his face - once adorned with such perfectly-gridded pins, now bare. She lowered herself to sit beside him, fighting back a sob even as the tears spilled.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "it shouldn't have been you." She sobbed and covered her face; her tears smudged the blood and washed it away at her wrist. She looked at him again through her fingers, so cold and so still. Weakly, almost ashamed, she reached forward and took the hand at his side, kissed it. The leather gripping his thumb had come loose, and slipped off.

"Please," she whispered to no one, to Leviathan, to _anyone_ who would listen, "please let him live. Please." She brought his hand to her cheek and kissed it again, opening her eyes. On his wrist, once hidden by the leather, was his mark smudged in blood. She felt a pang of guilt for seeing something so private - and then it moved. Kirsty frowned, swallowing, and wiped the blood from his wrist to see it more clearly.

00:00:01.

He drew in a breath.

* * *

 _I know, I know, I already did a soulmate AU story. I couldn't resist, I just really like the concept and I REALLY have a lot of feelings about the end of Hellbound._

 _Going to work on the next chapter of TPatC soon. Have a great week, everybody!_


	2. Chapter 2

Elliot James Spencer wasn't sure he believed in the marks being all that special, and he hadn't believed it for a long time. After all, his was absolute rubbish.

 _Were_ absolute rubbish.

The first set of numbers had appeared as most marks did - slowly, fading in from left to right, like it was emerging from beneath his skin. It took him a shameful amount of time to work out the numbers - he'd never been too good with maths - and he'd concluded it would run out when he was 33. He was an impatient boy, but as he grew older he came to like the number. 33 was a respectable age, he thought, by 33 he'd probably have some sort of career and a home, something to offer the person meant to be in his life. He was seventeen when he decided that yes, he was excited to meet his soulmate, and he was willing to wait for her.

* * *

The second set of numbers appeared the next day.

He almost missed his alarm, staring at them in disbelief; a brand new clock, right under the old one, the same dark blue and holding still as if that was perfectly normal of them. The number of hours was massive, more than twice that of his first set, and they just did not move. He wiped at his wrist - nothing. Elliot turned his hand, but it didn't change - the new numbers were no trick of his eye, none he could pick apart, anyway.

"Elliot, you'll be late!" His mother's voice pulled him from his disbelief, and he reluctantly stood up to begin his day.

* * *

He kept it to himself.

He wasn't sure why. Elliot had never been one to show off his mark, but it was new for him to consider it _private -_ but he did. He wasn't comfortable with anyone knowing about his strange new mystery number, especially since they still hadn't budged, still stayed the same.

He had less trouble with the math this time - the hours added up to about 67 years. 67 was an old age. Was he going to die then? He rubbed his wrist and frowned. He'd try not to think about it - if it was there, he reasoned, it meant something, but he'd never know what until he got there.

Elliot tucked his wrist under his sleeve and tried to forget about it.

* * *

He would not live to 67. He didn't want to live to tomorrow.

In the trenches of war Captain Spencer grew to resent his numbers. In the dark and the quiet, where there was nothing but the frightened breathing of his fellow soldiers and the rotted smells of gunpowder and the dead, he would sit and stare at them in anger, insulted by their ticking. How could they continue on into the future, when there was no future to be had? How could they promise something precious when surely the war had destroyed any good that was left in this wretched world?

He rubbed at them with a rag and one drop of the sparse, precious alcohol. It did nothing. It never did.

Elliot covered his wrist with his sleeve. A gunshot cut through the silence and he forgot the numbers and everything else but the war.

* * *

Elliot Spencer had stopped looking at his numbers, and half-swore on a bottle that he never would again.

He swore a lot on bottles. Bottles, pills, once a needle and too many times on his fragile and fragmented sobriety. He did not want to know when the moment came for him to meet his soulmate. Whoever she was, he thought miserably as he finished his drink and let it fall to the floor, she deserved better than the wreck that he'd become. Not that the thought made him want to be better; if anything it drove him further into his own hedonism, because at least if he was wholly ruined, she'd see it immediately, wouldn't try to save him when there was nothing left to save.

It wasn't until he had hit the bottom, when even the high of heroin did nothing to help him escape the horrors in the back of his mind, that he saw them again tonight.

72 hours, almost 71, in the middle of the night. _No,_ he thought with renewed horror, images playing through his mind of a woman looking at her wrist with hope in her eyes, seeing him and the hope dying in an instant. He couldn't do that to her. He had done things he was ashamed of; he had killed in the war, left people to die, he had fallen to this darkness and who knew how his family must have worried that he never came home to them and disappeared with only a letter of apology. He would not hurt her, whoever she was. Some wistful part of him loved her, a stranger he'd never seen, whose name he couldn't begin to dream up. _A missed opportunity would be less painful,_ he thought, and he stood up to leave his tent.

He had come here seeking a door to another world, and if it meant sparing his soulmate from a lifetime with what was left of him, then he would find it.

* * *

It was the night he was supposed to meet her, and he was hiding in his tent with a gilded box. He's rolled his sleeves up for no good reason, and was looking at the number now and then as he worked with it. 1 hour. 59 minutes. 58.

The time whittled away as he picked at the box, pushing and twisting, sliding his nails against the grooves. 50 minutes. She was probably waiting somewhere for him.

Elliot shook his head and kept working. In his mind he saw her face - no concrete features beyond kind eyes, and he'd always had a soft spot for brown eyes, but this shifting image of a woman who knew nothing about him but the mark on her wrist that called him to her. Perhaps she was Indian, or English, or somewhere else entirely and he wasn't supposed to be here at all.

45 minutes. Something clicked.

Despite the hollow sense in his chest, it excited him. He twisted something else, listening for that same sound, finding nothing. Frustrated, he set it back down and stared at it. He could hear mechanisms turning, little cranks and groans, and he wondered to himself. Was it resetting?

The noises stopped. 30 minutes. He picked it up again.

It took a few tries to make sense of it. He was slowly working out the pattern; like learning a maze, he retraced the same steps over and over, adding a new one to the last few every time a reaction occurred. He felt himself getting close to the end, to solving it properly. It was the closest thing to pride he'd felt in a long time.

15 minutes.

 _What if it's nothing?_ The thought came like the bullet that had clipped his shoulder years before, the exit scar still present on his back. It was sudden and painful and overwhelming. _I'll have wasted this moment for nothing._

 _No, not for nothing._ He closed his eyes, tried to get a clear picture of her again. Still no use. _She'll be safe from me._ He opened his eyes and soldiered on, working his way through the steps he'd already memorized and finally - _finally -_ finding the last one.

The box whirred in approval, and there was a second of silence more deafening than gunfire. He stared at it, sitting silently in his hands, and for a fleeting second he looked down to his wrist as he turned the box over. Six zeroes on his wrist, and the first one was slowly starting to disappear.

 _Disappear?_ He looked down at the box, and the chains that lashed out to dig into his face blocked him from seeing the second clock. He screamed and grabbed at them, and then there was a horrible pulling and white-hot pain that swallowed him whole.

Elliot James Spencer was gone.

* * *

He did not know where he was, or who he was. he had no name, or sense of direction in the dark; only the pain under his skin, new and exhilarating agony, and the leather cassock clinging to his waist. The newly-formed Cenobite looked around him into the dark, then to his hands, and a mark on his paper-white wrist. A strange and pale blur that could have been a bruise, and under it were six numbers, dark blue, perfectly still.

They started to count down.

* * *

 _I just needed a little something to wind down after finishing TPatC, but I'm definitely adding a third part to this soon. Thanks for reading!_


	3. Chapter 3

When the timer started - and it started within moments of his awakening - the timer marked sixty-six years, eight months, two weeks, a day and some-odd hours to seconds.

The Cenobite Prince was always acutely aware of the seconds ticking away, and he never forgot what time it listed. It was his secret; something he shared with nobody but his gods, who in turn kept the secret of what it meant from him.

 _It is part of your soul,_ Leviathan had told him on the first day - that first day with so many questions, so much fear and hunger and confusion, before he came into himself. He had never encountered a child Cenobite, but he would always consider those the days when he was young and new, new to this realm and to existence.

He had been wrong about that.

* * *

Perhaps it was vanity that led him to being disappointed when he found another clock.

This was not his first student trembling before him, but he was still a student himself - peering at their wrist, ticking away days and hours and minutes instead of years as his did. His first impulse was to destroy it, but he remembered his lessons and quelled the urge before he could act on it. Instead he wrapped the wrists in leather cord and bound them against the chair, stepping back to study the young man who looked at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"What are you going to do to me?" He asked in a whisper, and the Prince focused on the question to distract himself from his own.

"Nothing yet," he said, and the man wept. The Prince conjured a kerchief and brought it to his face - tears were such a waste to him, but he could understand the strangeness of it all. It was the least he could do to be a proper teacher.

* * *

Fifty years and three months exactly: that was what his clock read when he encountered yet another, all zeroes.

 _All zeroes._ It was on the wrist of a woman in her 20's who was fighting tears as she accepted their offer and had taken his hand. In her touch he heard the despair of a family that did not accept her, that denied her identity, that had her lover killed. He could see another girl's face behind her tears, the fallen beloved, and another set of zeroes on her wrist as the two embraced with joyful smiles - a bittersweet memory.

"The numbers," he asked gently as he led her to her new home, "what do they mean?"

"It's different for everyone," she said, forcing down a sob, "but that was when I met the love of my life. Now I'm never going to see her again."

Something within him ached, and at the moment he was unsure why.

* * *

There was no point in counting the seconds for fifty years, but he couldn't help checking once every now and then to see how much time was left.

He had encountered more clocks - not everyone had one, but the ones that did had colorful and varied stories. Some were still running their watches, waiting for what it promised. Some ran out when they opened the box, or met their true love, or when a terrible catastrophe befell them. Some ran out when they discovered something that changed them. One story he'd heard was a summoner's sibling - the timer ran out at sixteen, and that moment was when she realized that she was meant to be a woman. A timer had appeared on her other wrist and started counting up, measuring the seconds of her new life as herself.

He was unsure if he believed that one - he had seen few timers count upwards at all - but there was a charm to the thought. He contemplated his own clock as he thought of this, and as he looked at the numbers he realized something he had only been aware of on the surface, a realization that seized his chest and made him grow still.

There was only one week left.

* * *

He had lost count.

In his anticipation and his effort to contain it he had _lost count -_ the Prince was so concentrated on preparing for the day that when it came the impossible occurred, the one thing he'd never imagined in all the possibilities laid before him. He'd been caught off-guard.

She was pretty, that was to be certain - but many women were pretty. He'd encountered so many souls that one more barely felt like anything. What captured his attention was that she was _brave,_ that she was clever, able to find a way to slip out of their grasp even for a precious few minutes. When he and his Gash returned to the Labyrinth to wait and to listen, he found himself mulling over the encounter, and out of habit he pulled the thumb from his garment and peered under. A row of zeroes stared up at him, and he stared back.

He had _missed_ it.

* * *

For the next two weeks _nothing happened_ and his mask of calm tightened to keep him from screaming in frustration.

What had it been? When had the second that he'd been waiting for passed by? Not Frank, what a horrible thought, Frank escaping was a humiliating culmination of his patience. He briefly mused on the girl, on her restoring their lost quarry, but something about that felt... incomplete. Like that wasn't the _point._ But what was it?

Then the door was opened again, and he was forced to cover his thumb again. The leather was worn out from his habitual checking; he would have to have it repaired soon, or it would fall off completely.

* * *

He'd been wrong.

He remembered everything and he'd been wrong. Looking at Kirsty and the photo in his hand, he remembered - The Prince remembered himself, the man who used to be Elliot James Spencer. He remembered the war and the drugs and his vows on bottles and his body. He remembered escaping his despair chasing the high of a moment and hours of regret, the shame, the hunger. He remembered the first clock, now nothing more than a discolored patch on his wrist, what he'd considered the damnation of a beloved stranger.

He looked at his covered wrist, then at Kirsty's - he couldn't see if she had a clock, but even if she didn't, that really wasn't the point.

 _It was you,_ he thought, looking at her as his world came crashing down. _You were the catalyst. You were what I was waiting for._

There was a guttural growl and he looked up at Channard, feeling an old fire spark within himself. It had burned within him decades ago as a soldier, long before the war snuffed it out. He readied himself for battle as his Gash did the same.

He would not let her die.

* * *

He wasn't dead.

He wasn't the Prince, he wasn't Elliot, and he wasn't dead. He swam somewhere between them as the world came back to him, the past and present merging into something else as he opened his eyes and took in the world once more. He was bleeding - he _was_ bleeding, not anymore, now he felt no pain in his throat. There was only wet warmth and something squeezing his hand.

Already he could feel himself changing, the human mask cast on him melting away. His fingers lost their color as he sat up - and finally he realized he only had one hand free. He looked to his left, to _her,_ holding his hand and staring at it.

"Oh my god," she whispered, and he started to correct her when she turned his wrist for him to see, alongside her own.

Two clocks, identical in color, size, and location. And time.

They were both counting upwards.

* * *

 _I'm not sure it was clear in the last chapter, but Elliot's two timers add up to around 100 years, the second one starting immediately after the first one finishes. Originally I was going to spell this out, but it felt a little too close to my other story First, since that's all about the 100-year motif. Either way, hope this clears things up!_

 _... and I'm probably going to end up doing a part four. I intended for this to be the chapter where they both get a perspective in, but clearly that didn't happen. Oops._


	4. Chapter 4

"I'm sorry." Kirsty stared at the man in front of her; his face was still human, and blue eyes looked up at her in what she could only see as despair. "I'm so sorry, I didn't want this..." That strange echo from before was there, but far away and faint. The clocks had no nerve endings but she felt them just the same, the synchronized upward tick of their numbers, measuring the seconds of their shared future.

"You're... sorry?" She whispered, furrowing her brow. This man had _died_ for her, revived by some mercy she couldn't explain; she had been counting down the seconds of her life, and now this strange mark had all but promised her she'd never have to. Her mind was reeling with the strange understanding that she was not going to die young, might not die at all in this strange and inexplicable place. She had never expected this; certainly she had never expected him, but here he was, looking at her with mourning as the color drained from him, an upward crawl of paper-white easing across his skin. "Sorry for what?"

"For what I..." he looked down at his hand. It had lost its color already; the hair was starting to thin at his head and his eyes were darkening. "For what I was. The man in the photo is not the man I am now." As he spoke his voice grew deeper, his expression calmer. He could not hide the guilt in his eyes, though. "I suppose that is truer now than ever before."

"I'm not sure I understand." She looked down at her wrist again, at the ticking numbers. "When I first got this... I didn't think it meant I was supposed to _meet_ someone."

"I did." He turned his wrist to her with a sad smile, and now the pale blue blur was easier to spot against his flesh than it had been on pink. "I had two, once upon a time. The first one counted to about thirty-three years, and I was so sure..."

A great shifting sound cut him off, and Kirsty looked over her shoulder towards it. She felt a hand grip hers, and turned back to him, to see that stern expression she remembered from their first meeting.

"That's the door, Kirsty," he said, "and when it closes, I can't open it for you again. You'll have to decide now what you want to do." She looked back again, her soul somehow knowing the way; but something else in her knew that on the other side just lay more hospitals, more boxes, more Franks and Julias and doctors who didn't want to help. Her father wasn't here, but he wouldn't be out there, either.

She got to her feet, and turned back to the man who'd once been Elliot Spencer, offering her hands. After a moment of staring - of true and affected shock - he reached up with one hand, the other moving to push him off the floor properly. She heard another groan and knew the door was closing, and that she wouldn't be on the other side. The man - the Prince - looked at her with polite concern, his unnatural calm restored.

"You're never going to have your old life back," he said, the last traces of his human voice fading with each word. She tried to smile with a shrug, but both were half-hearted and not as carefree as she wanted.

"I wasn't going to anyway," she said, and with one last sound the door closed her into the Labyrinth.

* * *

The Prince, of course, had to explain what had happened. His Gash were still in their death-slumber, not quite ready to awaken; he had visited their sleeping forms and though he had not wept, his soul ached to see them motionless and beyond his reach. Even their minds, so rich and open to each other, were quiet. He remembered mourning during the war, and now he mourned again. Knowing they would return did nothing to soothe him, and the only thing he could truly do was distract himself.

It seemed there was much to distract him.

He couldn't argue with his god, because he wasn't a heretic and he wasn't an _idiot._ He did, however, have questions; and he'd offered his questions with humility and with as much grace as he could muster, and to his own credit, he'd managed to get answers without losing patience or breaking his deference to Leviathan. That was remarkably difficult with the creeping ghosts of what he now wondered might be post-traumatic stress, a term he'd never heard in his human lifetime but now seemed to ring a sort of truth to the quiet humanity in his soul.

His humanity had been deliberately silenced; not washed away but quieted, shaped into the foundation of who he was now. Looking at his wrist, the Prince thought about the first missing timer; no longer present but not truly gone, the dim background of the future that ticked away as patiently as it had before he had known why it was counting. He was not a lie, and that did ease some troubled thoughts. This, the Cenobite, was who he was now; not a replacement for the mind of Elliot Spencer, but a different phase, a transformation. He could accept that.

The true question that weighed on him, however, did not have an answer that lay at his god's disposal. It was with the woman who Leviathan had allowed to stay as she was, a resident of the Labyrinth who would remain untouched by it until she said otherwise. He walked down the long halls of his home and down the stairs to the layer just beneath the first one, where his chambers awaited behind a dark and gilded door.

The candlelight that danced across the stone walls was a soft blue; he found it less garish than the yellow of Earth's sun, and perhaps he could compare it to the ethereal glow of moonlight. The flames brightened at his approach, lighting the way to her.

 _Soulmate,_ he thought in the last fading whispers of Elliot's voice, a pang of human guilt striking his heart as he approached the door. He was not the man who had wanted so desperately to save himself from her. There was no drug, no drink, no desire that could divert him now, no substance that could drag him down to the place he'd been when the minutes of his human lifetime had run out. Knowing that didn't quell the guilt, the small apology in his human mind that she was bound to him forever. The Cenobite that he was did not feel the same guilt for that. The only thing the Prince felt, now especially as he approached the door and heard her soft voice weeping on the other side, was concern. Lightly, delicately, he knocked on the door.

"Kirsty?" he asked, and the sobbing stopped. "May I come in?" He heard her clear her throat.

"Yes."

* * *

 _There's one more part I was going to upload tonight with this one, but I can't keep my eyes open to finish editing it. It'll be up by morning!_


	5. Chapter 5

Kirsty couldn't imagine what she looked like now; she wasn't even certain how long she'd been crying, or when she'd started. He had led her here what must have been hours ago; through the halls of the Labyrinth, which felt only slightly less threatening and more inviting by his side even in its strangeness, to his chambers tucked away from any peering eyes or curious whispers. This room was hers, and he had given her permission to wander as she pleased while he took care of what he had to.

When he disappeared, however, she found exploring didn't interest her; instead her mind turned inward to the numbers and to Frank and Tiffany and her father, and somehow all of these things had come together and descended on her in an avalanche. Sitting here on these soft sheets and holding the steel blue quilt around herself, Kirsty felt the first overwhelmed sob rise to the top of her throat, and when it spilled out all of her agonies followed it. She cried, loud and unheard, mourning her father and her innocence and any certainty she might have had about the future. She was bound to somebody in this strange new world, but without the Earth she knew or the strange serenity that had come with believing she knew her future, she felt overwhelmingly lost and alone. There was nothing she could do but cry.

That had been some time ago. She had tired herself out now, and as the Cenobite opened the door and looked at her she imagined her eyes must have been swollen pink. She half-expected him to admonish her for crying, as he had the first time they met, but instead he walked to the side of her bed and sat on its edge, one or two feet away from where she was hugging her knees to her chest. She swallowed and slid herself a little closer, not wanting to feel so far away from the man who was apparently more important than she could have ever imagined. He reached towards her after a moment's consideration, and when she didn't pull away he brushed the back of his finger against her cheek, wiping away a tear.

"I thought they were a waste," she said, her eyes meeting his. The slightest crease in his brow was the only indication of any emotion behind that calm expression. He pushed the stripe of dampness from her cheek, the leather on his thumb worn from age and unexpectedly soft on her skin.

"In most cases, yes," he said, his hand moving to her other cheek to repeat the action, "but I suppose... there are exceptions to every rule." His voice still wasn't completely restored, but it was more Cenobite than human. His face and form were completely restored; how his pins had returned, she wasn't sure she should ask. Instead she cleared her throat again, trying to put words to her thoughts, to fill the strange silence between them.

"You need not speak if you do not want to, Kirsty," he said, and the way he said her name was comforting in a way she couldn't explain. It was as if she had waited her whole life for somebody to say her name with the softness he did, the way he made it sound in her ears.

"I do want to," she said, letting him push a curl of hair from her face, "I'm just uncertain what I should say." Was he touching her for her sake or for his? She found she didn't mind either option. Finally something coherent rose above her clouded, muddy thoughts. "You... apologized earlier. Why?"

He exhaled, and she only knew it was a sigh because it couldn't have been anything else; he tucked two strands he'd curled around his fingers behind her ear and pulled his hand away. She found herself disappointed by that, just a little.

"... The photo that you found," he started to say, "was taken before the end of the war. The man in that photo was..." he hesitated, eyes moving oh-so-slightly to each side as he searched for words, "...a different man from the one who opened the box. The man that _I_ used to be," and the emphasis on "I" seemed to be more for himself than for her, "was not someone with much reason to be proud. I had been immersed in vices." He paused again, and she saw a flash of deep, shameful blue in his eyes even as his lips only frowned the slightest bit. "I was addicted to opium," he said, "and alcohol, and women. I knew that it was not a place worth staying in, but I could not bring myself to leave. That was the man who apologized to you." Kirsty nodded, absorbing everything he said, but she still felt she was missing a piece.

"But apologized for what?" She asked, and he closed his eyes.

"Perhaps I should start from the beginning. It might be helpful for both of us."

* * *

The Prince was not a man who particularly liked to share parts of himself, but Elliot wanted to tell her _everything._ Slowly the two sides of himself had merged into one, and he found himself thinking of them not of individuals but as perspectives, two facets of himself that would work in tandem with each other from now on. The first decision he made from this new perspective was surprisingly simple, and that was to be honest with the young woman sitting just inches from him on this modest blue-sheeted bed.

He told her about the first timer - she wanted to see the blur again, and when he showed her his wrist she ran soft fingertips over it with quiet curiosity. He told her about how it counted down to thirty-three years and he'd expected, had thought he'd _known,_ that it was counting down to meet the one he was always meant to meet, and how he'd been wrong. He told her about the second timer with sixty-seven years on it, which just sat and waited without moving until his transformation, and how he'd never been sure what it meant until it finished counting.

He explained - in short sentences and minimal details, finding it hard to revisit that place, a pain he couldn't savor - how the war left him scarred and frightened and unable to relax. He did not mention his family, shame blanketing the memories as he remembered their letters and faces, and instead simply told her that he left England for India when his vices stopped working, chasing down anything to make him feel something again.

He told her about running away.

"I spent the years after the war despising what I'd become," he said, looking at his wrist, "and thinking that the timer was a damnation."

"For what?" As he'd spoken Kirsty had taken to asking more questions, making more remarks, and he found that didn't feel like a problem. Watching her slowly unfold from the frightened ball she'd been when he first entered was almost relieving, and now she was sitting on the side of the bed with him, eyes no longer swollen and her expression one of quiet interest.

"For you," he said, and her eyebrows knit together. "I still believed that it was counting down to meeting... my soulmate, I suppose, and I couldn't imagine anyone at all being happy while bound to me. Not when I was addicted and miserable." She frowned and looked down at her own wrist, and he could hear the suggestions of emotion coming off of her - doubt, indecision. He almost reached for her cheek again, tempted to peek into her mind and hear just what she was thinking about, but he found her voice, how she chose to speak those thoughts, to be much more interesting than the unfiltered source of them. "Does that trouble you?" He asked, and she shook her head.

"It's... not that." She held up her own wrist, looking at the little blue numbers. Twelve hours, had it really been twelve hours? It felt like eternity and an instant all at once to him. "When... this showed up, I didn't think it was..." She took a breath and started again. "I wasn't waiting for anybody. I didn't really know... there was more than one thing it could be."

"What did you think it was?" Now he was curious, because these numbers told him so much about the people who bore them, and he found himself utterly intrigued in the life and mind of Kirsty Cotton. She closed her hand into a loose fist and smiled sadly.

"You know, maybe I should have questioned it more... it was Frank that told me." A quiet fury sparked in his chest, but he silenced it to keep his attention on her. He would save his wrath towards Frank for later. "I thought... this was counting down all the minutes in my life. Completely." For the first time she laughed, but it was small and sad. "I thought... I really thought I was going to die in that hospital room. But I didn't. And I didn't really... plan for anything after that." She gave another small laugh, pushing her bangs from her face. "I didn't really... think I'd get any further than that. I don't... know what to do with myself."

"Perhaps rest would be a good place to start." She looked up at him and nodded, exhaustion settling in her gaze. "I imagine we could both use some time to recover from today." He started to stand again. "If you need to find me, simply ask. The corridors will show you the way. Rest well, Kirsty."

"Wait." He had already started to turn, to retreat from such a strange and vulnerable exchange, when Kirsty's hand reached out for his own. She stood up, swallowing a little. "...Thank you. For saving my life."

"You are certainly welcome, Kirsty," he said, and after a moment's consideration (and a moment of human sentiment), he lifted her hand and gently kissed the back of it. Another moment's thought and he turned his grip, pressing another kiss to the numbers on her wrist. She turned a soft shade of pink in her cheeks at that, and he allowed himself to smile. "Rest well."

"...You too," she said, but before he could pull away she took her hand back with his. He watched with interest as she studied his own numbers, and then she leaned forward, brushing her lips against his skin.

He felt like a foolish schoolboy with how that made his pulse pick up, but then she smiled, a shy smile just for him, and he banished the thought of being ashamed of it. He had waited one hundred years for her, and if she was going to make his heart race, then so be it. She let go of his hand, and he nodded at her, resisting the urge to lean forward and kiss her lips. He desperately wanted to, but there was only so much emotion he could handle in one night. Instead he brushed the side of her face one more time before pulling away.

"Good night, Kirsty," he said, and he left her in her room. The last sight he caught as he closed the door was her sitting back down on the bed, reaching for one of the pillows and pressing her hand into it. The door shut with a faint _click,_ and he stared at it for a moment. He finally forced himself away from the door and toward his study, determined to immerse himself in his work until he felt something close to normal again.

The Prince delved into his writings; for all of the chaos of this last day, he had learned a considerable amount from studying Channard that he intended to record. He lost himself in writing, dark ink on old and thickened parchment, until finally he found himself at the end of the day's observations. There was much more to learn, to examine, but the Prince was absolutely exhausted. Perhaps he needed rest after all.

As he rose from his desk, he reached across its polished black surface to lift a small glass sphere from a clawed and bladed pedestal, an ornate little thing he'd been given decades before. He turned the ball in his hand, watching the mirrored disk inside slowly turn on its sideways axis.

"Show her to me," he said, and the mirror spun into a blur that melted into an image of blue. Kirsty lay on the bed in a simple nightgown, eyes closed, a mask of serenity on her tired face. Content, he set the sphere back down and watched the image fade. With one last thoughtful glance, he walked away from his desk and made his way towards his bedchamber, where rest and time for contemplation awaited him.

There was a strange future that lay before him - he was no longer just himself, his understanding of this world had changed, and he now had a companion in the form of a truly remarkable young woman. As he thought about her sleeping form, the peace on her face, he let exhaustion settle into his own shoulders. The Prince took one glance at the numbers - sixteen hours - before covering it once more. Kirsty needed the rest, and so did he.

The future could wait until tomorrow.

* * *

 _So this is a blast to write, but I think I'm going to put a pin in it for the time being so I can focus on my other projects. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!_

 _edit: don't… write when you're half asleep. You get important details like what your POV character was addicted to wrong. OTL_


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